tim Rowledge wrote:

>
> Compiling straight to machine code is certainly doable; it simply  
> involves a lot more work since you have to develop and optimise and  
> debug a *lot* more stuff. For example, you'd have to rewrite the  
> compiler, the debugger, the InstructionStream related classes and  
> tools, any system that expects to write out methods, etc etc. Send  
> enough money and I will arrange it for you. Discussions could start  
> at, ooh, One *Million* Euros.

Doable, but not really a good way to implement Smalltalk.
You'd lose the binary portability and in turn gain a lot of weight, 
since bytecodes are so much more compact than machine language.
IIRC, Peter Deutsch stated that dynamic compilation of bytecodes to 
machine language is actually faster than paging pre-compiled machine 
code into memory.

Cheers,
Hans-Martin

P.S.: Tim certainly knows that, but he'd use every trick he can pull to 
get at One Million Euros for doing something Smalltalk-related :-)
P.P.S.: If you have One Million Euros to spend on something 
Smalltalk-related, *do* give it to Tim. You won't be disappointed.